Impact of WssTP

Within the last FP7-2013 Water Inno-Demo Call, WssTP members had a success rate of 54% compared to an average success rate of only 13%!

As the officially recognized European Technology Platform for Water by the EC, WssTP has substantially contributed to the development and improvement of the water sector in Europe through its key activities and its members’ presence as active players of the water sector.
WssTP appears to have played a critical role in the position of water projects on the European Commission’s Research Framework Programme FP7 as well as the participation of its members in the funded projects. Analyzing the figures given by the European Commission, it becomes evident that the funding allocated to water projects has been essentially doubled between 2007 and 2012, while WssTP members’ involvement in FP7 projects has been on a constant rise throughout these years. WssTP members have characteristically participated in a total amount of 186 projects, funded to the tune of 661.032.177 euros.

WssTP members have also achieved a great success in this year’s FP7-2013 Water Inno-Demo Call that underlines once again the importance of WssTP as a successful collaborative platform to build projects: analyses have shown that with only a 4% participation, WssTP members are present in 91% of the winning consortia. More importantly, WssTP members had a success rate of 54% compared to an average success rate of only 13%!

Additionally to WssTP’s success in projects, WssTP has developed a Water Vision, a Strategic Research Agenda and an Implementation Document, by many reports on specific challenges and technologies, describing the state of the art, technological challenges, the barriers to innovations, and making suggestions on how to address these. WssTP’s reports have served amongst others as input for the definition of the research priorities under the Research Framework Programme.

WssTP has also acted as an initiating catalyst for many EU projects among them E4Water, TRUST, Prepared, ChemWater and ZELDA and is involved in communication at policy, regulation, strategy and technical detail levels such as: Inputs on the Strategic Implementation Plan for the EIP on water, Barriers to innovation and examples of solutions including the role of standardisation, financing innovation in the European water sector etc.
Bringing together a broad range of actors from the water industry, universities, RTO’s and water users, WssTP has been the ‘spokesperson’ for those organizations when it comes to liaison with different DGs of the European Commission (DG Environment, DG Research & Technology Development, DG Regio, DG Connect, DG Development), the European Parliament and other European stakeholder organizations.

WssTP also liaises with the DG’s / Parliament to ensure the state-of-the-art views on and possibilities of water innovation are taken up in processes as the Blue Print on EU’s water, the implementation of Horizon2020, the Cohesion Package, the EIP Water, EIP Raw materials, the EIP SMART Cities and Communities and other relevant policy dossiers.